Shaivism/Tantra/Nath New movements Kashmir Shaivism Gaudapada Adi Shankara Advaita-Yoga Nath Kashmir Shaivism Neo-Vedanta Inchegeri Sampradaya Contemporary Shaivism/Tantra/Nath Neo-Advaita Hinduism Buddhism Modern Advaita Vedanta Neo-Vedanta Robert Adams (January 21, 1928 – March 2, 1997) was an American Advaita teacher.

[2] Adams' teachings were not well known in his lifetime but have since been widely circulated amongst those investigating the philosophy of Advaita and the Western devotees of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.

[3][note 2] A book of his teachings, Silence of the Heart: Dialogues with Robert Adams, was published in 1999.

[5] Adams claimed that from as far back as he could remember, he had visions of a two-foot tall, white-haired, bearded man seated at the foot of his bed who used to talk to him in a language that he did not understand.

Having no prior knowledge on yoga, he opened the book, and for the first time saw a photo of the man he had experienced visions of as a young child: Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.

[4] At the age of 16, Adams' first spiritual mentor was Joel S. Goldsmith, a Christian mystic from New York,[8] whom he used to visit in Manhattan in order to listen to his sermons.

Adams did so and visited Yogananda at the Self-Realization Fellowship in Encinitas, California, where he intended to be initiated as a monk.

[8] With $14,000 of inheritance money from a recently deceased aunt, Adams set off for India and his guru Sri Ramana Maharshi in 1946:[1] When I was eighteen years old, I arrived at Tiruvannamalai.

I was with Nisargadatta, Anandamayi Ma, Papa Ramdas, Neem Karoli Baba and many others, but never did I meet anyone who exuded such compassion, such love, such bliss as Ramana Maharshi.

[9] [better source needed] According to Robert Adams: Over the course of this time he had many conversations with Sri Ramana Maharshi, and through abiding in his presence was able to confirm and further understand his own experience of awakening to the non-dual Self.

[10] After Sri Ramana Maharshi left the body in 1950 Adams spent a further seventeen years travelling around India[note 3] and stayed with well-known gurus such as Nisargadatta Maharaj,[note 4] Anandamayi Ma, Neem Karoli Baba and Swami Ramdas to name but a few.

He also spent time with less well-known teachers such as Swami Brahmadanda "the Staff of God" in the holy city of Varanasi.

In the late 1960s, Adams returned to the United States and lived in Hawaii and Los Angeles before finally moving to Sedona, Arizona[14] in the mid-1990s.

In the 1980s Adams developed Parkinson's disease,[16] which forced him to settle in one location and receive the appropriate care.

[12] A small group of devotees soon grew up around him and in the early 1990s he gave weekly satsangs in the San Fernando Valley, along with other surrounding areas of Los Angeles.

[17] After several years of deteriorating health, Adams died on March 2, 1997[1] in Sedona, Arizona, where he was surrounded by family members and devotees.

[19] Ramana Ashram's The Mountain Path has also concluded that Robert Adams was never there:[20] There is the curious case of Robert Adams, an American guru who asserted that he was at Sri Ramanasramam between 1947-8 and 1952 (the dates vary in his conversations) and that he moved closely with Bhagavan.

The earliest age of memory recall is 2 years old even for major events like hospitalization and a sibling birth.

Adams' way of communicating to his devotees was often funny,[24] and with interludes of silence or music between questions and answers.

[12]Although Adams was never initiated into a religious order or spiritual practice, nor became a renunciate, his teachings were described by Dennis Waite as being firmly based in the Vedic philosophy and Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta.

[3] Advaita (non-dual in sanskrit) refers to the ultimate and supreme reality, Brahman,[note 9] which according to Ramana Maharshi, as interpreted by some of his devotees, is the substratum of the manifest universe,[28] and if describable at all, could be defined as pure consciousness.

In his weekly satsangs Adams advocated the practice of self-enquiry (ātma-vichāra)[17] as the principal means of transcending the ego and realising oneself as sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss).

[37] For example, Robert Adams recalls staying at the ashram for over eight months attending all of Ramana's meetings yet was never seen, noted, or remembered by anyone who was actually there, when in actuality Westerners were always noted, written about and photographed by the Ashram, as a visit from a Westerner was highly unusual and always well documented.

Robert told one such story at length during his August 2, 1992, satsang about a chat at the Osborne house in which he says the two talked about various things such as self-enquiry, the maturity and sincerity of seekers, and a number of other topics.

[40]Robert Adams claimed to have private personal visits with Ramana inside the Osborne house when in actuality Ramana never went inside a grihasta (householder's) home after 1896 and did not leave the ashram front gates after 1929 except on two well noted occasions, neither of which involved going to the Osborne house.

[41][40] In his August 9, 1992 satsang, Robert told a story of sadhus rolling boulders down the hill from the caves above Skandashram attempting to murder Ramana, apparently unaware that there are no caves above Skandashram despite previously claiming to have lived there for years.

So they rolled boulders down on him.Many of Robert's fictional stories involved money that did not take into account for the monetary inflation that happened in India between the 1940s and 1990s such as his story of Henry Wells: I recall a Westerner, I'm trying to think of his name, Henry Wells, from Scotland.

[43] Apparently, Robert failed to realize the unlikelihood of a Scotsman donating dollars and the fact that $40k in 1950 could have likely bought the entire town of Tiruvannamalai and most certainly would have at least been noted by someone at the ashram itself.

[45][46] According to Ed Muzika in his Yoga Journal article of Jan/Feb 1998, “During the fall of 1946 Robert traveled to India, arriving by train in the town of Tiruvannamalai, a few miles from Arunachala mountain, the site of Ramana Maharshi's ashram.

Others were highly imaginative descriptions meant to contain some type of parable or spiritual truth which he apparently made up on the spot and told entertainingly as "first-person" accounts.